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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Alison PhippsORCiD
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by SAGE Publications Ltd, 2016.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Whose personal is more political? This article explores the role of experience in contemporary feminist politics, arguing that it operates as a form of capital within abstracted and decontextualised debates which entrench existing power relations. In a neoliberal context in which the personal and emotional is commodified, powerful groups mobilise traumatic narratives to gain political advantage. Through case study analysis this article shows how privileged feminists, speaking for others and sometimes for themselves, use experience to generate emotion and justify particular agendas, silencing critics who are often from more marginalised social positions. The use of the experiential as capital both reflects and perpetuates the neoliberal invisibilisation of structural dynamics: it situates all experiences as equal, and in the process fortifies existing inequalities. This competitive discursive field is polarising, and creates selective empathies through which we tend to discredit others’ realities instead of engaging with their politics. However, I am not arguing for a renunciation of the politics of experience: instead, I ask that we resist its commodification and respect varied narratives while situating them in a structural frame.
Author(s): Phipps A
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Feminist Theory
Year: 2016
Volume: 17
Issue: 3
Pages: 303-321
Print publication date: 01/12/2016
Online publication date: 13/08/2016
Acceptance date: 02/04/2016
Date deposited: 17/01/2022
ISSN (print): 1464-7001
ISSN (electronic): 1741-2773
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700116663831
DOI: 10.1177/1464700116663831
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